‘‘Somebody I Look Up To:’’ Ethical Role Models in Organizations GARY R. WEAVER LINDA KLEBE TREVIN ˜ O BRADLEY AGLE ‘‘I want to be just like him.’’ – mid-career naval officer ‘‘This was a guy I wanted to be like’’ – low-level manager When Dale Prows went to work for a leading chemical company several years ago as vice president of global purchasing and supply, he had been hired specifically to cen- tralize what earlier had been a decentralized operation. Reflecting on that assignment, Dale notes that he tends to act very quickly, to get a job done and move on to the next. In a major initiative such as the centralization project, this means that he might not always be sensi- tive enough to the needs and concerns of others. But during that project, Dale found himself tempering his speed and ambition because of a question he kept asking himself: ‘‘What would Jon do?’’ Earlier in his career, Dale had worked closely with Jon Huntsman, chairman of Huntsman Corporation. Dale remembered that, in similar situations, his former colleague would have considered the impact of his decisions and actions on others. And so Dale tried to follow that exam- ple. Looking back, he thinks that the outcome of the centralization project was far more successful than it would have been had he not kept in mind Jon Huntsman’s example. Several years ago Kathryn Reimann, senior vice president of global compliance at American Express Co., was faced with the challenge of bringing together two teams that had experienced friction among some team members in the past. Near the end of one meeting, the level of antagonism among some participants became obvious and per- sonal, and made others uncomfortable. Kathryn interrupted the meeting and said: ‘‘You guys may have thought this was an acceptable meeting. I did not. I will not lead another meeting where I feel like I need to hide the scissors in the room. You guys go and do whatever you need to do to hammer out your differences, or figure out how to keep them out of our meetings. If you can’t do that, you will not be part of my team, because I will not accept people treating one another like this.’’ Her invitation to do what- ever was necessary to deal with past hard feelings, together with the assurance that disrespectful behavior would not be toler- ated, proved to be very helpful in bringing this team together as a productive and satis- fying working group. In reflecting on this experience, Kathryn believes that she gained some of her confidence for acting with such boldness from having watched the actions of a highly respected senior executive she worked with very early in her career. When Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 313–330, 2005 ISSN 0090-2616/$ – see frontmatter ß 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.orgdyn.2005.08.001 www.organizational-dynamics.com Acknowledgments: Research supported by the Ethics Resource Center Fellows Program and the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware. 313